With an estimated 200 million people globally out of work and 40% of people globally either underemployed or in vulnerable forms of employment, unemployment remains a critical policy challenge for governments.

However, in reading publications like Forbes, one hears about the conundrum corporates face who claim to have plenty of job openings, yet lack the skilled people required to fill them.

Why do companies struggle to find the right talent, despite the fact that we have never been better educated as a society? It all points to a major mismatch between the skills our students are being taught and it's relevance to the employment market. Something fundamentally does not work, and is not working in the way we educate and train our young people to get them into the workforce.

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Getting America back to work and repairing the "rust belt" are key themes of President Donald Trump’s administration, which promises 25 million new jobs, signaling this issue as one of its top priorities.

While education and training models and methods have traditionally been determined by the public sector, we are catching on that the most successful education and training systems are those which seek to align classroom lessons with the needs of industry and local employers.

Parents have always sought to guide their children’s career paths. Yet as the pace of change and the nature of work perennially evolves and quickens, the question of whether or not a child’s chosen subjects of study will translate to a job can be answered with hope, but not certainty. In today’s world of automation and global supply chains, education and employment no longer take on linear paths - jobs can quickly change and so do their requirements.

The methodical processes of bureaucracies are critiqued as too slow to adapt to the pace of change. However, if there is to be reform to the education and training system, the public sector will need support, and this support should come from the main beneficiary of the education and training sector - employers.

Collaboration between public and private sectors stakeholders is essential to developing a system that works for students and employers. It allows education and training opportunities to be as diverse and flexible as required by the demand for talent and supply of jobs. The world is filled with a variety of jobs requiring all kinds of people and skill sets. But the modes and pathways currently available in education and training fail to properly reflect this diversity.

What can this administration do to deliver on the promise of new jobs, without expanding government or federal spending? One solution lies in an age-old practice with origins in medieval times, yet has managed to endure through innovating and adapting across numerous sectors, countries, and cultures – the humble apprenticeship. Regular workforce studies shows us that the apprenticeship model works – countries with strong apprenticeship systems (Switzerland, Germany, Austria) have robust economies due to a skilled workforce, and less than half the rate of youth unemployment found in the U.S. Take Switzerland for example, only 30% of youth follow the academic path, while the vast majority, 70% take on an apprenticeship. Not coincidentally, these economies have comparatively lower government debt, and higher labour productivity.